10 Best Time Tracking Software for Architects Compared Side by Side

Architecture firms bill differently from almost anyone else who tracks time. A concept design phase might run on a fixed fee, construction administration might switch to hourly, and a single project can move through both within the same year. Log time the way a generic freelancer tracker expects – one client, one hourly rate, one invoice – and the numbers stop matching how your firm actually gets paid.

That mismatch is why so many architecture firms end up trying three or four tools before finding one that fits, or give up and reconstruct billable hours from memory at the end of the month. This guide compares the tools built to handle phase based, mixed fixed fee and hourly work, so you can find one that matches how your firm actually bills instead of forcing your billing around the software.

What is time tracking for architects?

Time tracking for architects means logging hours against a specific project phase, whether that phase is billed hourly or covered by a fixed fee. A schematic design hour and a construction administration hour can carry completely different value depending on the contract, so the software has to record which phase and which project an hour belongs to, on top of how many hours were worked that day.

That distinction is what separates real time tracking and billing software for architects from a generic freelancer timer, and it’s the whole reason tools for architecture firms exist in the first place. A generic tool assumes one client, one rate, one invoice. An architecture firm needs hours that roll up by phase, compare against the fee budgeted for that phase, and still make sense when a single project switches from fixed fee to hourly partway through, such as when a client asks for extra site visits during construction that weren’t part of the original scope.

Where generic tools break down on phased billing

Most time tracking apps are built around a single assumption: a day is a stack of interchangeable hours. Architecture practices don’t work that way, and the mismatch shows up in four specific places.

• No phase level detail: A tool that only logs hours per project, not per phase, hides exactly the thing a firm needs to catch early. If schematic design quietly runs long, nobody notices until construction documents inherit a squeezed budget and a rushed timeline.
• Hours disconnected from fees: Recording time without comparing it to the fee assigned to that phase makes scope creep invisible until it’s already eaten the margin. By the time someone manually reconciles hours against the contract, the budget for reallocating staff or renegotiating scope has usually already passed.
• No real time visibility: Generic trackers report hours after the fact, not burn rate while it’s still happening. A dashboard that shows fee consumption as work progresses is what lets a principal shift staffing before a phase goes over, not after.
• Staffing data lives somewhere else: When time tracking and resource scheduling sit in separate systems, staffing calls end up based on who looks free on a calendar rather than who actually logged the hours. That gap is exactly where overbooking and burnout start.

Put together, these gaps explain why a tool that works fine for a freelance consultant billing one client at an hourly rate falls apart for a firm running five projects through five different phases, some fixed fee, some hourly, at the same time.

What a mixed-billing tool needs

Each gap above points directly at a feature worth checking for. Here’s a practical checklist for evaluating architects time tracking software before you commit to one.

1. Phase level time entry: Look for software that lets you log hours against a project phase, one level more granular than the project as a whole. That’s what turns a single overrun phase into an early warning instead of a surprise three phases later.
2. Budgets tied to fees, not hours alone: A tool should let you set task estimates or an hour budget per phase and show consumption against it as work happens, so scope creep shows up while there’s still time to act on it.
3. Live dashboards, not end of month reports: Burn rate and fee consumption need to be visible in real time. Waiting for a monthly report to find out a phase went over defeats the purpose of tracking in the first place.
4. Time and staffing in one system: Look for resource planning built around the same time data, which avoids staffing decisions made from a calendar that doesn’t reflect who’s actually stretched thin.
5. Support for mixed billing: A single project moving from a fixed fee schematic design phase to hourly construction administration shouldn’t require switching tools or exporting to a spreadsheet halfway through.
6. Mobile capture for site visits: Site visits and field observations happen away from a desk. A tool that makes logging that time from a phone as easy as logging it from a desktop keeps site hours from getting reconstructed from memory later.

Best time tracking software for architects

The table below summarizes all ten tools covered in this guide, including whether each one was built specifically for architecture and engineering firms or adapted from a more general time tracking product.

1. actiTIME

Key features:

• Online timesheet
• Task estimates vs. actuals
• Billing & invoicing
• Productivity reports
• Mobile apps

Why it works: actiTIME lets you set a task estimate for each project phase and track logged hours against it in real time, so a schematic design phase running long shows up on a dashboard immediately rather than after the fact. Time can carry a different billing rate per work type, which covers a project that moves from a fixed fee phase to hourly construction administration without switching tools, and tracked hours turn directly into a client invoice.

Best for: Architecture firms of any size that want time, budget consumption, and billing living in one system instead of three.

Pricing: Free for up to 3 users; $5/user/month for 1–40 users, $1,500/month for unlimited users on the online version; self-hosted from $120/user as a one-time purchase.

Free trial: 30 days, no credit card required.

Pros:

• Task estimates compared against actual hours make phase overruns visible while a phase is still in progress, well before a month-end report would catch it
• Invoices generate directly from tracked billable time, so hours don’t need re-entering into separate billing software
• Available as both cloud and self-hosted, useful if client or project data can’t leave your own infrastructure

Cons:

• No built-in resource scheduling or capacity planning, so larger firms may still want a separate tool for staffing decisions

I’ll recommend actiTIME for an architectural business like ours

I’ll recommend the software, especially for an architectural business like ours – the solution seems to be intuitive and streamlined, the learning curve is modest and the product works as you expected. A web-based interface is a big plus as well – it is very easy and very simple!

Try actiTIME

2. Harvest

Key features:

• Timers and manual entry
• Invoicing
• Expense tracking
• QuickBooks & Xero sync

Why it works: Harvest keeps time entry simple: start a timer or fill in hours later, tag them to a project and task, and the numbers flow straight into an invoice or a QuickBooks/Xero sync. It won’t track phase budgets or fee consumption the way a purpose built AEC tool does, but for a small practice that just needs clean, low-friction hours and invoicing, that simplicity is the appeal.

Best for: Small architecture practices that want straightforward time tracking and invoicing already synced to their existing accounting software.

Pricing: Free for 1 seat and 2 projects; Teams from $9/user/month; Enterprise from $14/user/month; Enterprise Plus custom, with 20% off on annual billing.

Free trial: 30 days on paid tiers, no credit card required.

Pros:

• Clean, minimal interface makes the free tier genuinely usable for a solo practitioner, rather than a stripped-down demo
• Direct QuickBooks and Xero sync means invoicing doesn’t require a separate accounting step

Cons:

• No phase level budgets or fee consumption tracking, so a firm running multi-phase contracts has to manage that comparison outside the tool
• Free plan caps out at 2 projects, tight for a firm juggling several active jobs at once

3. Total Synergy

Key features:

• Phase based timesheets
• Budgets and quotes
• Resource allocation
• Invoicing

Why it works: Total Synergy is built specifically for A&E practices, so phase based time entry, fee budgets, and resource allocation are native to the product rather than bolted on. Time logged against a phase rolls up into the same system that generates the quote and the invoice, which keeps a project’s financial picture connected end to end instead of living across separate tools.

Best for: Architecture and engineering firms that want one system covering the full project lifecycle, from the original quote through final invoice.

Pricing: Not published; quote based after a demo.

Free trial: Demo-based – contact sales to see the product before committing.

Pros:

• Phase based structure matches how architecture firms actually scope and bill work, without needing to adapt a generic project template
• Time, budgets, and invoicing live in one connected system rather than requiring exports between separate tools

Cons:

• No published pricing makes it hard to compare cost against other options without booking a demo first

4. Houzz Pro

Key features:

• Time & expense tracking
• Client dashboards
• Estimates & invoices
• CRM & marketing tools

Why it works: Houzz Pro bundles time and expense tracking into a much wider platform covering 3D floor plans, client-facing dashboards, estimates, and online payments. For a residential architecture or design build firm already using Houzz to find clients, logging time in the same platform that holds the project files and the client relationship avoids adding a separate tool just for hours.

Best for: Residential architecture and design build firms already using Houzz for marketing and client management.

Pricing: Free plan with basic features; Design $99/month; Pro $199/month; Teams from $399/month with unlimited users; additional seats on lower tiers cost $50/user/month.

Free trial: 30 days, no credit card required.

Pros:

• Time tracking sits alongside the client dashboard and project files, so hours don’t live in a disconnected tool
• Marketing and CRM features are a genuine bonus for firms that rely on Houzz for lead generation already

Cons:

• Built around residential design and remodeling workflows, not commercial architecture’s phase and fee structures
• Higher tiers get expensive fast for a firm that only wants the time tracking piece

5. CMap

Key features:

• Job costing
• Resourcing
• Timesheets & expenses
• Margin reporting

Why it works: CMap connects timesheets directly to job costing, so a firm can see margin health on a project as hours accumulate rather than discovering it went over budget once the job closes. Resourcing lives in the same system as time tracking, which keeps staffing decisions grounded in actual logged effort instead of a separate scheduling spreadsheet.

Best for: Mid-size to large architecture, engineering, and consulting firms that want job costing and resourcing bundled with time tracking rather than pieced together from separate tools.

Pricing: Not published; quote based after a demo.

Free trial: Demo-based – contact sales to see the product before committing.

Pros:

• Margin and job costing data update as time is logged, rather than only at invoicing or project close
• Built on Microsoft 365, which eases adoption for firms already standardized on that ecosystem

Cons:

• No published pricing, and the feature depth suggests it’s priced for firms past the solo or very small team stage

6. Project Flow by Milient

Key features:

• Time management
• Resource planning
• Project management, offer to invoice
• Knowledge base

Why it works: Project Flow consolidates the entire project flow, from the initial offer through the final invoice, in one place, with time and resource management as core modules rather than add-ons. Capacity planning draws on the same time data the team logs day to day, which keeps availability estimates grounded in what people are actually working on.

Best for: Architecture and engineering practices that want resourcing and time tracking tightly integrated, without stitching together separate scheduling and timesheet tools.

Pricing: Not published; quote based after a demo.

Free trial: Demo-based – contact sales to see the product before committing.

Pros:

• Time and resourcing share one data set, so a project manager sees actual logged effort next to planned capacity in the same view
• Covers the whole workflow from offer to invoice, reducing the number of separate tools a firm needs to maintain

Cons:

• No published pricing or self-serve trial, so evaluating fit requires going through a sales demo first

7. Monograph

Key features:

• Project financials
• Timesheets
• Budget tracking
• Reporting

Why it works: Monograph was built by architects for architecture and engineering firms, so its timesheets, budgets, and reports already speak the language of phases and fees rather than generic tasks. The company reports firms see a 44% reduction in budget overages after switching, which tracks with what phase level visibility is supposed to catch early.

Best for: Small to mid-size architecture firms that want project financials and time tracking without the overhead of a heavier enterprise platform.

Pricing: $25 to $490 per month depending on firm size, billed annually upfront; pipeline management is a separate add-on.

Free trial: Demo-based – no published self-serve trial.

Pros:

• Built specifically for architecture and engineering, so the vocabulary and structure match how firms actually scope work
• Unlimited projects and reports on every tier, rather than gating reporting behind a top tier

Cons:

• Annual payment is required upfront, with no monthly billing option

8. Clockify

Key features:

• Time tracker & timesheet
• Billable rates
• Budget & estimates
• Reports

Why it works: Clockify covers manual and timer based tracking, billable rates, and budget alerts at a genuinely low price point, which makes it a reasonable starting point for a small firm that isn’t ready to pay for an AEC-specific platform. It won’t natively separate a fixed fee phase from an hourly one, but billable rates and project budgets can be configured to approximate that distinction.

Best for: Small firms and solo practitioners who want a low cost, easy to configure tracker without built-in AEC features.

Pricing: Free for up to 5 users; Basic from $3.99/user/month; Standard from $5.49/user/month; Pro from $7.99/user/month; Enterprise from $11.99/user/month, all billed annually.

Free trial: 7 days of full Pro features, no credit card required.

Pros:

• Lowest starting price on this list for a paid tier, useful for a firm watching software costs closely
• Budget and estimate features on the Pro tier can approximate phase tracking without a dedicated AEC platform

Cons:

• No native phase-to-fee comparison or resourcing built specifically for how architecture firms scope work
• Free plan caps out at 5 users, tight once a firm grows past a very small team

9. Scoro

Key features:

• Time tracking & timesheets
• Quoting
• Resource planning
• Invoicing

Why it works: Scoro sells time tracking and invoicing as one of several modules you can combine, so a firm can start with just time and billing, then add resource planning and quoting as it grows rather than paying for the whole platform upfront. Everything shares one data set, so a logged hour is visible in resourcing, invoicing, and utilization reports at once.

Best for: Firms that want time tracking bundled with quoting, resourcing, and invoicing in one configurable platform, without committing to a full AEC-specific suite.

Pricing: From €15 ($17) per user/month for the Time-Billing module combination, 5-user minimum; full end-to-end platform from €52 ($57) per user/month; 13 to 17% off on annual billing.

Free trial: 14 days, no credit card required.

Pros:

• Modular pricing means a small firm isn’t forced to pay for resourcing or CRM modules it doesn’t need yet
• Utilization and profitability reporting update from the same time data used for invoicing, no separate export needed

Cons:

• 5-user minimum makes it a poor fit for a solo practitioner or a two-person practice
• Not built specifically for architecture, so phase based billing has to be configured rather than used out of the box

10. Deltek Ajera

Key features:

• Time & expense entry
• Project accounting
• Schedule manager
• Automated billing

Why it works: Ajera pairs time and expense tracking with full project accounting, so tracked hours flow directly into invoices, accounts receivable, and the firm’s general ledger rather than stopping at a report export. Timesheet Assist suggests entries based on recent work, which lowers the friction of daily logging for staff who’d otherwise reconstruct their week from memory.

Best for: Small architecture and engineering firms that want project accounting, rather than only a time tracker, in one system built specifically for A&E.

Pricing: Not published; quote based after a demo.

Free trial: Demo-based – contact sales to see the product before committing.

Pros:

• Time data connects directly to accounts receivable and general ledger, useful for firms that want accounting and time tracking in one system rather than two synced ones
• Timesheet Assist reduces the effort of daily entry by suggesting hours based on recent activity

Cons:

• No published pricing or self-serve trial, and the accounting depth is more than a very small firm may need

The real cost of not tracking billable hours

Without phase level time data, a firm finds out a project went over budget the same way it finds out a roof leaked: after the damage is already done. A phase that ran long doesn’t show up as a problem in the moment, it shows up three phases later as a fee that’s already spent and a client who’s already expecting the next deliverable. The same thing happens with scope creep – a few extra site visits or an unplanned round of client revisions look small individually, and without hours tied to a fee, nobody notices they’ve quietly consumed the margin until the project closes out barely profitable. Add in the hours that simply never get written down (a call that ran long, an afternoon spent solving a problem that felt too minor to log) and the gap between hours worked and hours billed becomes a permanent, invisible discount the firm gives away on every project.

Track time at the phase level and the same information arrives while there’s still time to act on it. A principal sees fee consumption rising against a phase before it’s exhausted, which leaves room to rebalance staffing, flag scope creep to the client, or adjust the timeline before the budget is already gone. Utilization data and project profitability metrics become accurate enough to actually inform staffing and pricing decisions, instead of being a guess reconstructed from memory at the end of the month. And because logged hours map directly to what gets invoiced, fewer of them fall through the cracks between the work happening and the client being billed for it.

Billable vs. non-billable time

Not every hour an architect works belongs to a client project, and treating all of it the same way distorts both billing and planning. Business development, writing proposals, training junior staff, and general firm administration are all real work that consumes real hours, but none of it should land on a client invoice.

The reason this split matters more for architects than it might for other professions is scale: a firm chasing new work through competitions and proposals, training staff on code changes or new software, and running its own internal operations can easily lose 20 to 30% of total capacity to non-billable activity. When that time goes untracked, the damage shows up in two separate places. A firm that doesn’t know how much non-billable time its staff actually needs will overbook billable project work against people who don’t have the capacity for it. And a firm that can’t see how much time proposals and business development really cost will keep underpricing the effort required to win new projects in the first place.

Tracking both categories separately, rather than only logging billable hours, gives a firm the full picture: how much time each project actually costs to deliver, how much capacity is realistically available for new work, and where non-billable time is quietly crowding out the hours that generate revenue. A dedicated look at billable hours trackers is worth a read if this split is the main problem you’re trying to solve.

Who looks at the numbers, and why

The same timesheet entry gets used differently depending on who’s looking at it, which is part of why a tool needs to serve more than one audience at once.

• Architects and designers mostly need logging to get out of their way. The entry itself should take seconds, not pull them out of a design task, while still capturing enough detail (project, phase, task) that the hour is useful to everyone else who touches it later.
• Project managers use the same data to keep a phase on track day to day: comparing logged hours against the budget for that phase, moving a task to whoever actually has room on their plate, and flagging scope drift while a client conversation can still address it.
• Firm owners and principals look at time rolled up across projects and clients rather than any single entry. That aggregate view is what shows which project types are actually profitable, how utilization metrics look across the team, and how the firm as a whole is performing against its targets for the year.

A tool that only serves one of these audiences well usually leaves a gap for the others – a system built purely for quick entry rarely gives principals the reporting they need, and a system built purely for executive reporting often asks architects for more detail than they’ll reliably provide.

How to choose the right tool for your firm

With ten options on the table above, the right pick comes down to a handful of practical questions about how your firm actually operates, starting with what kind of architecture firm time tracking software actually fits your workflow.

• How complex is your billing? A firm that bills every project the same way (all hourly, or all fixed fee) can get by with a general purpose tracker like Harvest or Clockify. A firm that regularly mixes fixed fee and hourly phases within the same contract benefits more from software built around that structure, such as Total Synergy, Monograph, or actiTIME.
• Do you need accounting depth, or just hours and invoices? Deltek Ajera and CMap go further into full project accounting, general ledger, and accounts receivable. If your firm already has a bookkeeper or accountant handling that layer, a tool that just tracks time and produces clean invoices, like actiTIME or Harvest, is enough.
• What’s your firm size? Solo practitioners and very small teams are usually better served by a free or low-cost tracker (actiTIME, Harvest, Clockify) than by an enterprise AEC platform priced and built for dozens of staff. Scoro’s 5-user minimum, for instance, rules it out for a one or two-person practice outright.
• Is resourcing a real pain point, or just a nice-to-have? If overbooking and staffing conflicts are a recurring problem, weight tools that bundle resource planning with time tracking (CMap, Project Flow, Scoro) more heavily than ones that only track hours. If your firm already runs a separate project management tool that handles scheduling, a simpler time tracker that syncs with it may be all you need on top.
• What does your firm already use? A tool that syncs cleanly with your existing accounting software (QuickBooks, Xero) or is already part of a platform you use for something else (Houzz Pro, if you rely on Houzz for client leads) can be worth more in practice than a marginally better standalone feature set.
• Take the trial seriously before committing. Log a real week of phase based work in a tool before deciding, rather than a demo project. A tool that looks clean in a sales walkthrough can still be the wrong fit once your actual mix of fixed fee and hourly phases hits it.

Common mistakes firms make

• Logging time to a project, not a phase. Without phase level detail, a firm can see that a project is on budget overall while one phase is already badly over and another is quietly under, with the two numbers canceling each other out on paper.
• Reconstructing hours at the end of the week. By Friday, most people can’t accurately remember where Tuesday afternoon went. Entries logged well after the work happened tend to round toward whatever’s easiest to remember, not what actually occurred.
• Treating non-billable time as an afterthought. If proposals, business development, and admin work aren’t tracked with the same discipline as billable hours, a firm has no real picture of how much capacity those activities actually consume, and ends up overbooking billable work against staff who don’t have room for it.
• Not comparing logged hours against the budget until invoicing. Waiting until the end of a phase (or the end of a project) to check hours against the fee turns time tracking into a record of what already happened, instead of a warning system that could have changed the outcome.
• Picking a tool for its feature list, not for how your firm bills. A tool with an impressive feature set that can’t cleanly represent a project moving from fixed fee to hourly mid-contract will fight your actual billing structure every month, regardless of how many other capabilities it has.
• Rolling out a new tool without a clear policy first. If staff aren’t told upfront how to categorize a client call versus internal admin versus training, everyone invents their own rule, and the resulting data is too inconsistent to use for planning or billing with any confidence.

How to roll it out

• Define phases and categories before day one. Decide how your firm splits schematic design, design development, construction documents, and construction administration, plus how business development, proposals, and admin get categorized, and write it down somewhere everyone can check. Ambiguity here is what produces inconsistent, unusable data later.
• Set a budget or fee target per phase, not per project alone. This is what turns the tool from a record keeper into an early warning system – without a phase level project budget target, there’s nothing for logged hours to compare against.
• Get buy-in by framing it around accuracy, not surveillance. Architects are more likely to log time consistently when the pitch is accurate billing and realistic future estimates, not management oversight. A tool introduced as a monitoring measure gets resented and gamed.
• Train on the actual interface, beyond a policy walkthrough. A short demonstration of real phase and category entry prevents the most common failure: people skipping entries simply because they haven’t built the habit of logging as they work.
• Make site visit logging as easy as desk logging. If mobile entry is clunky, site time will get reconstructed from memory days later, exactly the pattern the tool is supposed to prevent.
• Log daily, not weekly. Entering time right after finishing a task, even roughly, produces far more accurate phase level data than trying to reconstruct a week from memory on Friday afternoon. A few concrete time management techniques build that habit faster than a policy telling staff to log more often ever will.
• Review data in the first few weeks, ahead of invoicing. Checking entries early catches miscategorized phases and inconsistent logging before they become a pattern across a full billing cycle.
• Feed actual hours back into future estimates. If a phase consistently runs over its budgeted hours, that’s information for the next proposal, and not simply a line item to write off. Reviewing actual-versus-estimated time regularly is what makes future fee proposals more accurate.

The right tool matches how your firm actually bills

Every tool on this list can record an hour. What separates them is whether that hour lands in the right phase, at the right rate, and rolls up into a budget comparison your firm can actually act on before a project goes over. Purpose built platforms like Total Synergy, Monograph, CMap, Project Flow, and Deltek Ajera handle phase based, mixed fee billing natively. General purpose tools like actiTIME, Harvest, and Clockify can be configured to approximate the same structure, often at a fraction of the cost, which makes them a strong starting point for smaller firms.

Whichever you choose, the real payoff isn’t the software itself, it’s catching a phase running over budget while there’s still time to do something about it, instead of finding out once the fee is already spent.

FAQ

Do architecture firms actually need a dedicated AEC time tracking tool, or is a general tracker enough?

It depends on how uniformly your firm bills. If every project runs on the same billing model, all hourly or all fixed fee, a general tracker like actiTIME, Harvest, or Clockify usually covers it, often at a fraction of the cost. Firms that regularly mix fixed fee and hourly phases within the same contract get more value from software built around that structure from the start, since a general tracker can approximate phase tracking but won’t handle it as natively.

Can one tool handle a project that moves from a fixed fee phase to an hourly phase partway through?

Yes, but not every tool does it cleanly. actiTIME and the AEC-specific platforms in this guide, including Total Synergy, Monograph, CMap, Project Flow, and Deltek Ajera, let you assign a different billing rate or fee structure per phase within the same project, so the switch doesn’t require exporting to a spreadsheet or starting a second project record halfway through.

How much does poor time tracking actually cost an architecture firm?

There’s no single industry figure, since it depends on firm size and how far phases run over, but the pattern is consistent. A phase that overruns without anyone noticing eats directly into that phase’s fee, unbilled hours become a standing discount the firm gives away on every project, and inaccurate utilization data leads to overbooking staff who don’t have capacity for it. All three compound over a year of projects, which is why firms that switch to phase level tracking often report double digit reductions in budget overages.